Old US Route 66: Attractions

Gemini Giant, Wilmington, IL

The Gemini Giant is a fiberglass mascot of the Launching Pad Drive-In
Restaurant in Wilmington, IL. They give out that he is some kind
of astronaut or spaceman or something, but I think he is a rogue
nuclear power plant worker. Here he prepares to drop the Big One
on SR 53 traffic.

Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant, Braidwood, IL

Since 9/11, administrators of strategic facilities have become
increasingly sensitive to potential breeches of security and may react
aggressively to inquisitive acts on the part of the public such as
taking snapshots. Even
though the Braidwood Plant stands adjacent to Old US Route 66, I've not
dared
to observe the occasions of my passage as photo ops.

Kite Spinners, Redbird Antique Mall, Chenoa, IL

Old US Route 66 is a flea-market enthusiast's dream come true.
Now, I know Harley riders to be hep to the latest trends in yard art
and paragons of good taste, so I'll leave it to you. (As a
Goldwing owner, I'm clueless.) Is this cute, or what?

Poster, Work on a Farm This Summer, Route 66 Museum, Clinton,
OK

Likewise those headed east are to turn off at Clinton, OK,
to visit the Route 66 Museum there. Admission is charged. One starts in
the 1920s and progresses by the decade from one room to the next.
The lights in each room come on automagically, revealing wall-sized
photos of roadwork in progress. Tokens of each time period and
memorabilia from
long-gone roadside institutions are displayed, but you are responsible
for poking the
button that provides ambient popular music by well-known recording
artists
such as Frank Stokes ("'Taint Nobody's Business If I Do" 1928), Woody
Guthrie ("Will Rogers Highway" 1940), Glen Miller ("In the Mood" 1940),
Elvis Presley ("Heartbreak Hotel" 1956), The Beatles ("I Saw Her
Standing There" 1963), and The Eagles ("Hotel California" 1976).

Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 ~ the long concrete path
across
the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi
to Bakersfield ~ over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up
into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and
terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into
the rich California valleys.

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking
ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting
winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness
to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these
the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side
roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the
mother road, the road of flight.

[Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York, 1939.]

Woody Guthrie
(1912-1967) was a folk singer from Okemah, OK. Information about him on
the Internet is not helpful for dating his lyrics. Although he
performed on radio in his early years, he was never widely recorded,
and he was
later blacklisted for his radical political beliefs; nevertheless,
tapping him as the icon of the 1930s is
reasonable. He was responsible for
the Dust Bowl anthem Dusty
Old Dust. No doubt you have heard a performance or two by Pete
Seeger (1916-) who is also a composer and folk singer (Where Have
All the Flowers
Gone).

Seeger, though he hails from the
East, was a
contemporary of Guthrie and is somewhat more than a fellow traveler.

In
1940, Guthrie wrote his most famous song, "This Land is
Your
Land,"
which was inspired in part by his experiences during a cross-country
trip and in part by his distaste for the Irving Berlin anthem "God
Bless America," which he considered unrealistic and complacent. (He was
tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio.) In the original
version of "This Land is Your Land" Guthrie protested class inequality
with the verse:

In the squares of the city, In the
shadow of a
steeple; By the relief office, I'd seen my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there
asking, Is this land made for you and me.

and protested the institution of private ownership of land with the
verse:

As I went walking, I saw a sign there; And on the sign there, It said, 'NO
TRESPASSING.' But on the other side, It didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me.

In another version, the sign reads "Private Property." These verses
were left out of subsequent recordings (even by Guthrie himself),
turning what was a protest song into one more along the lines of the
then-current style of patriotic songs.

The melody Guthrie used for "This Land is Your Land" is the melody for
the old gospel song, "When the World's on Fire." This song is probably
best known as recorded by the country/bluegrass legends, The Carter
Family, around 1930.

Midewin Prairie Headquarters, USFS, Elwood, IL

The US Forest Service is reclaiming the vast grounds of the Joliet
Arsenal where weapons of mass destruction were manufactured for World
War II. It has been renamed Midewin,
and they are slowly turning it back into a natural prairie.
Most of it is still in pasture or under cultivation. The project is
expected to continue for decades.

Yellow Cone Flowers, Midewin, Elwood, IL

There is a small visitors' display in
the office building and a short path around
a pond in front of it. Those looking for seed sources and advice about
converting midwestern waste areas to natural vegetation will be
interested as will hikers. There are (or will be) miles-long walking
tours over
non-hazardous areas of the site. Check in at the reception desk.

Brown Eyed Susans, Pony Bridge, El Reno, OK

Keep your eyes open for wild flowers all along Old US Route 66.
Spraying curtailed their variety, but some species turned out to
be immortal. Others have been making a comeback, aided, no doubt,
by
local restoration efforts.

Our Lady of the Highways, Waggoner, IL

MARY
LOVING MOTHER
OF JESUS
PROTECT US ON
THE HIGHWAY~*~
ERECTED BY
LITCHFIELD DEANERY
CATHOLIC
YOUTH COUNCILDEDICATED
OCTOBER 29, 1959

Lincoln Tomb

Internal and
external deterioration of the Lincoln Tomb has prompted
two reconstructions. The first began in 1899 and was completed two
years later. At that time the height of the obelisk was increased by 15
feet, and the steel and concrete vault containing the president's
remains was buried beneath the floor of the burial chamber.

During the 1930
reconstruction the hallways were created, and a simple
red marble stone was placed in the burial chamber to mark the
president's grave. Eleven varieties of marble were used for walls and
floors. Bronze statues and plaques were also added.

Knucks

by Carl Sandburg, 1918

In Abraham Lincoln's city,
Where they remember his lawyer's shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories
From Tallahassee to the Yukon,
The place now where the shaft of his tomb
Points white against the blue prairie dome,
In Abraham Lincoln's city ~ I saw knucks
In the window of Mister Fischman's second-hand store
On Second Street.

I went in and asked, "How much?"
"Thirty cents apiece," answered Mister Fischman.
And taking a box of new ones off a shelf
He filled anew the box in the showcase
And said incidentally, most casually
And incidentally:
"I sell a carload a month of these."

I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks,
Cast-iron knucks molded in a foundry pattern,
And there came to me a set of thoughts like these:
Mister Fischman is for Abe and the "malice to none" stuff,
And the street car strikers and the strike-breakers,
And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen,
Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers,
They are all for Abe and the "malice to none" stuff.

I started for the door.
"Maybe you want a lighter pair,"
Came Mister Fischman's voice.
I opened the door ~ and the voice again:
"You are a funny customer."

Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories,
This is the place they brought him,
This is Abraham Lincoln's home town.

Lincoln Bust, Springfield, IL

The bronze bust before the entrance to the tomb is a reproduction of
Gutzon Borglum's marble head of Lincoln in the Capitol building in
Washington, DC. Visitors are compelled to touch its nose
for luck.

Union Miners' Cemetery, Mt Olive, IL

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was an Irish immigrant. Her husband and
children died of yellow fever in Tennessee in 1867. She went into
business as a seamstress in Chicago and was burned out in the Great
Fire of 1871. She then became an agitator for organized labor. She
helped found the Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW, the "Wobblies")
in 1905.

Mother Jones lost as many battles as she won, but still she
got results. She was by far the most famous and charismatic organizer
for the United Mine Workers. When she began working for that fledgling
union in the 1890s, it had 10,000 members; within a few years, 300,000
men had joined, and she organized many of their wives into "mop and
broom" brigades, militant women who fought alongside their husbands.

In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter
mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous
"march of the mill children" from Philadelphia to President Theodore
Roosevelt's summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen
children ~ boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by
the machinery of the textile mills ~ walked to a new town, and at
night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing
thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come
for decades, but, for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her
street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.

We assembled a number of boys and girls one morning in
Independence Park, and from there we arranged to parade with banners to
the court house where we would hold a meeting. A great crowd gathered
in the public square in front of the city hall. I put the little boys
with their fingers off and hands crushed and maimed on a platform. I
held up their mutilated hands and showed them to the crowd and made the
statement that Philadelphia's mansions were built on the broken bones,
the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children. That their
little lives went out to make wealth for others. That neither state or
city officials paid any attention to these wrongs. That they did not
care that these children were to be the future citizens of the nation.

The officials of the city hall were standing at the open
windows. I held the little ones of the mills high up above the heads of
the crowd and pointed to their puny arms and legs and hollow chests.
They were light to lift.

I called upon the millionaire manufactures to cease their
moral murders, and I cried to the officials in the open windows
opposite, "Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall,
and, when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit."

The officials quickly closed the windows, as they had closed
their eyes and hearts.

The workers started an agitation for an eight-hour day. The
trades unions and the Knights of Labor endorsed the movement, but,
because many of the leaders of the agitation were foreigners, the
movement itself was regarded as "foreign" and as "un-American." Then
the anarchists of Chicago, a very small group, espoused the cause of
the eight-hour day. From then on the people of Chicago seemed incapable
of discussing a purely economic question without getting excited about
anarchism.

The employers used the cry of anarchism to kill the movement.
A person who believed in an eight-hour working day was, they said, an
enemy to his country, a traitor, an anarchist. The foundations of
government were being gnawed away by the anarchist rats. Feeling was
bitter. The city was divided into two angry camps. The working people
on one side, hungry, cold, jobless, fighting gunmen and police clubs
with bare hands. On the other side the employers, knowing neither
hunger nor cold, supported by the newspapers, by the police, by all the
power of the great state itself.

The anarchists took advantage of the widespread discontent to
preach their doctrines. Orators used to address huge crowds on the
windy, barren shore of Lake Michigan. Although I never endorsed the
philosophy of anarchism, I often attended the meetings on the lake
shore, listening to what these teachers of a new order had to say to
the workers.

On the evening of May 4th [1886], the anarchists held a
meeting in the shabby, dirty district known to later history as
Haymarket Square.

One of the anarchist speakers was addressing the crowd. A bomb
was dropped from a window overlooking the square. A number of the
police were killed in the explosion that followed.

The city went insane, and the newspapers did everything to
keep it like a madhouse. The workers' cry for justice was drowned in
the shriek for revenge. Bombs were "found" every five minutes. Men went
armed, and gun stores kept open nights. Hundreds were arrested. Only
those who had agitated for an eight-hour day, however, were brought to
trial and a few months later hanged.

The Union Miners Cemetery is linked to ... "The Virden Riot,"
... a shootout with mine guards on October 10, 1898, as a train
carrying 180 black strike-breakers recruited from the south, attempted
to pass through a band of armed strikers and reach safety within a
fortified stockade at Virden.

The mine guards, imported from St. Louis, were better armed
and had the advantage of the stockade. The firing was intense, lasting
about ten minutes. The train's engineer was wounded, and he returned to
Springfield with his cargo still aboard. Dead were seven miners and
five guards. Forty other miners and four guards were wounded.

The men from Mt. Olive were buried originally in the town
cemetery, but the owner of the land objected to the ceremonies and
other activities which the miners held there. The Lutheran cemetery was
barred to them because that minister denounced the miners as
"murderers."

The local union, thereupon, purchased a one-acre site, and the
bodies were moved to the new Union Miners Cemetery in 1899. Additional
land was acquired in 1902, and again in 1918 and 1931, in order to
accommodate the monument [and grave of Mother Jones] which was
dedicated on October 11, 1936.

The dedication was, itself, a monumental event. Five special
trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought celebrants to Mt. Olive. Others
came in private cars or hitch-hiked to the town. The crowd was
estimated at 50,000. There were 32,000 in the line of march.

Meramec Caverns

I've been in other caves. I've been in other "show caves." This was the nicest in
terms of tourist comfort.

First of all, it doesn't smell like a cave. They have some
superduper citrusy substance that they must spritz into the air or
slather on the guide rails or something. You just can't believe
you're in a dank underground chamber. It never occurs to you that
you are cheek by jowl next to a bunch of other sweaty tourists.

Under the neon sign, which tells
you where you are, there is a replica moonshiner's shack complete with
still. The tour guide frankly confesses this has nothing to do with the
history of Meramec Caverns ~ political, social, or geologic ~ but is
merely included as an Ozarks reference ~ so you know where
you are.

Likewise there is a Jesse James diorama.

Gift Shop, Meramec Caverns

You have to walk past the cafeteria to get to the gift shop, which
entirely encloses the mouth of the cave. In the old days, people
would drive into the cave and dance on a grandstand built inside.
Contemporary visitors may be forgiven for assuming that cave floors are
typically flat enough not only to dance on but also to lay a tile floor
on.

Meramec Caverns

There is an illuminated picture portrait of Lassie in the cave because
an episode of the ever-popular TV series (starring Opie Taylor) was
filmed here. You remember it, I'm sure. It's the one where
Lassie rescues Timmy, or was it Flipper?

Art Linkletter did a gag for his TV show in which a pair of contestants
personated a prehistoric cave couple, performing a skit for the
amusement of tourists. This is remembered with
fondness and
commemorated, too, with a stop on the tour and concomitant signage.

There is even a Foucault pendulum installed in the cave for a local
science fair. It is one of only 16 in the known world. It
is the only one that doesn't work. It's too lightweight. It
doesn't store enough energy to keep going long enough for the
precession of the earth to be obvious.

Meramec Caverns

By now in my description, I've given you the idea that the Meramec
Cavern tour is about anything other than the cave. This is not
true. There's plenty of cave stuff in the cave and a river, too; you
just have to walk for a way to get to it. Also, you have to climb
stairs ~ one whole flight ~ so I ask you: If you were a guide in charge
of a bunch of sweaty tourists, what would you talk about?

The finale is a light show in a "room" with a curtain wall of flowstone
(and theater seating). This is accompanied by a recording of Kate
Smith (1907-1986) singing Irving Berlin's God Bless America.
Apparently hers is the only performance that could ever shake loose a
cascade of
water from the flowstone. Kate Smith fans don't seem to feel that
this is any kind of
exploitation.

[Benton, Thomas Hart. The Ballad of the Jealous
Lover of
Lone Green Valley. 1934. Spencer Museum of Art, University of
Kansas, Lawrence.]

Okie Baroque

I want to include an image not relevant to Old US Route 66 except for
its Ozark connection and because its artist was a native of Missouri.
This Regionalist masterpiece by Thomas
Hart Benton (1889-1975) includes a haystack, a cow, and an
outhouse. It is a representation of an Ozark folk song, The Jealous
Lover, but I doubt that the traditional lyrics refer to these
extraneous elements. Okie Baroque is a term of derision applied
to
Regionalism in art, notwithstanding that the subject matter and the
artist, too, generally operate at some distance from Oklahoma.

OK, how does the painting make you feel? Dizzy? To me, it's "merely
humorous."
Obviously, the musicians in the scene conjure the scene, so we have
to account for recursion in the composition. El Greco
distortion allows some dramatic distance from the action; there's no
transubstantiation expected; the painting merely epitomizes country
music or the act of
making it, anyway. The characters are paired. The intensity of the
villain is mirrored in the harmonica player. The singer expresses the
heroine's expression. All is done in the deadpan style traditional to
folk-music performance. The performers distort a facsimile of reality
without expecting to be caught in it. They depend on their audience
to differentiate between story built of substance and reality from
which substance is borrowed.

Benton's figures are foreshortened as though you were to view them from
below. To keep them from looming out of the frame, he uniformly
positions the foreground behind a sill that the viewer must strain to
see over.

Note: The harmonica player is assumed to be Jackson Pollock.

Discussion question: What is the mood of the cow?

Statue (1972), Praying Hands by Jack Dawson, Webb City, MO

American flags
flapped in the breeze Thursday at King Jack Park as
about four dozen people clasped hands in circles of prayer.

They prayed for
unity. They prayed for guidance for national and local
governmental leaders. And, they prayed for continued religious freedom
and Christian reform.

Similar prayers
echoed throughout area towns at breakfast meetings and
ceremonies in observance of the National Day of Prayer. This is the
54th year that the observance, established by an act of Congress, has
folded the hands of participants on the first Thursday in May.

"I'm all for this
program," said Betty Lamb, of Webb City. "I think
it's needful. I think unless we turn and hold up prayer before the
Lord, our nation is in peril."

Webb Citians have
an appropriate site for the ceremony: at the foot of
a hill where the Praying Hands statue was erected 34 years ago. The
creator of the sculpture, Jack Dawson, and his wife, Nancy, were
speakers at Thursday's event.

"It's not a political statement but a spiritual one,"
Dawson said of the statue. He said the folded hands that stand along
Missouri Highway 171 represent a silent reminder every day that
"humility before a living God is where we find that spiritual peace."

The United States was founded on a number of precepts that
include the right to religious freedom. The Founding Fathers relied on
Christianity to underpin the nation they created, Dawson said. He
quoted George Washington as having said, "It is impossible to rightly
govern the world without God and the Bible."

Big Brutus, West Mineral, KS

In the southeast corner of Kansas, stands this remnant of strip mining
for coal. This shovel was parked on the verge of its last dig and
decommissioned in 1974 after running day and night for eleven years.
Its motors and hydraulic pumps were removed. In 1985, stairways were
installed for tourist
access. Because of insurance-company concerns, patrons are no
longer permitted on the boom.

The model 1850-B, built by Bucyrus-Erie, is still the second largest
electric shovel in the world. It ran off the end
of a giant extension cord. Its final monthly electric bill was $27
thousand.

[Big Brutus: Explore it! West Mineral, KS: Big Brutus, Inc.,
n.d.]

Mining Promo Patches, West Mineral, KS

Operator's Cabin, Big Brutus, West Mineral, KS

The operator's cab was the nerve center of the shovel. The
breakroom and operator's cab were air conditioned. The monogram
worked in the linoleum tile stands for Pittsburg and Midway Coal Mining
Company. P&M paid $6.5
million for Big Brutus in 1962.

Bucket, Big Brutus, West Mineral, KS

The
shovel required a running crew of only three: operator, oiler, and
groundman. It was
used to remove overburden from coal seams.

The operator's cab projects from the
corner of the house.

The bucket held 135 tons or more. There are stunt pictures of workers'
parking
a pickup inside.

Eisler Market (1925), Riverton, KS

The store was
built in 1925. It was originally a Standard Station. By 1932, a Y Not
Eat Barbecue had been added. The Eisler family bought the location in
1973 and opened a market and deli. The old building is well maintained
and still contains the original pressed tin ceiling.

Eisler Market, Riverton, KS

Stop here for all your Route 66 needs. Many travelers find the porch a
convenient and pleasant place to hog down a sandwich and soft drink.

Heyburn Lake, Kellyville, OK

Heyburn Lake was
named after the community of Heyburn, a post office
from 1911-1922, located near the place where the St. Louis-San
Francisco Railroad crossed Polecat Creek. The project is located on
Creek lands in the former Indian Territory. Many of the towns
surrounding the project began as trading posts and developed as
settlements as the railroads moved west.

45th Infantry Division Museum

If you are into ordnance, be sure to visit the 45th Infantry
Division Museum in Oklahoma City, OK. Outdoors, there's a pasture
with lots of tanks, cannon, and aircraft. Indoors, there are guns,
guns,
and more guns. The history of firearms in warfare is pretty well
covered with not one but several examples from every major conflict.
Annotated displays compare and contrast the various specimens.

Tribes and Nations of Oklahoma and Indian Territories

Several exhibits at the 45th Infantry Division Museum deal with Indian
Wars. One includes a map like this, showing where indigenous
nations of the East were relocated during removal
to the Indian
Territory.

I always imagined Oklahoma's being settled in a single land run
starting at the Arkansas border. In fact, there were several
rushes and lotteries over the years as tribal and unassigned lands were
divvied up.

Second State of the Union Address (Excerpt)

by Andrew Jackson, 6 Dec 1830

It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent
policy
of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly 30 years, in relation to
the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching
to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the
provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and
it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also
to seek the same obvious advantages.

The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United
States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The
pecuniary advantages which it promises to the Government are the least
of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of
collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments
on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized
population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage
hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north
and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will
incalculably strengthen the south west frontier and render the adjacent
States strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It
will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of
Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly
in population, wealth, and power. It will separate the Indians from
immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power
of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and
under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay,
which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually,
under the protection of the Government and through the influence of
good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community. These consequences,
some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete
execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress at their last session an
object of much solicitude.

Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly
feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them
from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. I
have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the
duties and powers of the General Government in relation to the State
authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the States within
the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this
Government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of
their acts, but as a Government we have as little right to control them
as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.

With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw
tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the
liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to
remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them,
which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating
these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and
they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western
forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now
reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made
with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the
Government. They give the Indians a liberal sum in consideration of
their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their
new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate
existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the
inconveniences and vexations to which they would unavoidably have been
subject in Alabama and Mississippi.

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this
country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising
means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been
arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the
earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the
graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true
philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to
the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the
monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, spread over the
extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once
powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room
for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there any thing in this which,
upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race,
is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent
restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers.
What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by
a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities,
towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements
which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than
12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty,
civilization, and religion?

The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same
progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the
countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have
melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and
civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire
the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair
exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a
land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual.

Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but
what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now
doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers
left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands
yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant
regions. Does Humanity weep at these painful separations from every
thing, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become
entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country
affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in
body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their
highest perfection.

These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their own
expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at
their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in
this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is
made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give
him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal,
and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own
people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on
such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to
them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.

And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment
to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more
afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our
brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General
Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is
unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their
population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter
annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and
proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.

In the consummation of a policy originating at an early period, and
steadily pursued by every Administration within the present century~so
just to the States and so generous to the Indians~the Executive feels
it has a right to expect the cooperation of Congress and of all good
and disinterested men. The States, moreover, have a right to demand it.
It was substantially a part of the compact which made them members of
our Confederacy. With Georgia there is an express contract; with the
new States an implied one of equal obligation. Why, in authorizing
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama to form
constitutions and become separate States, did Congress include within
their limits extensive tracts of Indian lands, and, in some instances,
powerful Indian tribes? Was it not understood by both parties that the
power of the States was to be coextensive with their limits, and that
with all convenient dispatch the General Government should extinguish
the Indian title and remove every obstruction to the complete
jurisdiction of the State governments over the soil? Probably not one
of those States would have accepted a separate existence~certainly it
would never have been granted by Congress~had it been understood that
they were to be confined for ever to those small portions of their
nominal territory the Indian title to which had at the time been
extinguished.

It is, therefore, a duty which this Government owes to the new States
to extinguish as soon as possible the Indian title to all lands which
Congress themselves have included within their limits. When this is
done the duties of the General Government in relation to the States and
the Indians within their limits are at an end. The Indians may leave
the State or not, as they choose. The purchase of their lands does not
alter in the least their personal relations with the State government.
No act of the General Government has ever been deemed necessary to give
the States jurisdiction over the persons of the Indians. That they
possess by virtue of their sovereign power within their own limits in
as full a manner before as after the purchase of the Indian lands; nor
can this Government add to or diminish it.

May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more
zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to
the laws of the States, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of
those children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy
removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present
or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened.

Bill Mauldin, 45th Infantry

The 45th Infantry Division Museum houses a collection of original World
War II cartoons contributed by Bill Mauldin, the artist, who served
with the 45th Infantry in Italy. He created Willie and Joe, an Oklahoma
Redneck and an Oklahoma Choctaw, a couple of grunts who endured the
rigors of war up
front together. They continually flirted with insubordination.

Mauldin's
drawings were always controversial. He had enemies in high places, but
he had supporters, too, who must've felt he contributed to morale.
Perhaps they were not so afraid of a little subversion as we would be,
or perhaps they were and found it necessary to provide Mauldin's
detractors a lightning rod to discharge their frustration. In this
cartoon, Willie and Joe demonstrate that pop-psych manipulation
is a two-way street.

Overseas,
Mauldin's work recorded war from a unique perspective; he
drew war showing humor in the face of misery. By November of 1943 his
cartoons were being carried in the Stars and Stripes, and by February
of 1944 he was detached from the division and assigned to the Stars and
Stripes for the duration of the war. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
in 1945 for editorial cartooning, and the army honored his work by
presenting him with the Legion of Merit.

Gas Mask, 45th Infantry Division Museum

OKC National Memorial

On 19 Apr 1995, the second anniversary of the Waco, TX, massacre, the
220th anniversary of the Revolutionary War Battle of Lexington and
Concord,
MA, and four years and a day before the Columbine High School, CO,
massacre, a truck bomb set by Timothy McVeigh collapsed the facade of
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK. 168 people
were killed and over 800 injured.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial commemorating the event was
dedicated in 2000.

OKC National Memorial

The reflecting pool occupies a
portion of the ground where the Murrah Building stood. The black Gates
of Time at either end are labeled 9:01 and 9:03, a minute before and a
minute after the time of the blast. This is about how long it took the
American public to decide there is a perennial threat of domestic
terrorism.

Specifications developed for new Federal buildings in years since now
require street-level barriers and setbacks.

OKC National Memorial

Like an abstract set for the Thornton Wilder play, the Field of Empty
Chairs holds 168 illuminated stools, each named for a victim of the
bombing. 19 are tiny. These represent the children who
were killed while attending
day care in the building.

"If I had known
there was an entire day-care center, it might have
given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral
damage," McVeigh said, according to an ABC interview.